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Tag archive: polarised positron beam

The pursuit of polarised positrons

| 8 September 2011 Researchers gather in Beijing to discuss the latest and future research on positron sources for a next-generation linear collider at this year’s POSIPOL workshop. Category: Feature | Tagged: , , , ,

Creating polarised positron beams

3 July 2008 The PosiPol2008 workshop was held from 16 to 18 June in Hiroshima, Japan. An unfamiliar word, "PosiPol" stands for "polarised positrons", meaning that the "spins" of positrons are aligned when they meet electrons at the centre of a linear collider. The electron beam is designed to be polarised at the ILC, but according to the baseline configuration positrons are unpolarised (or left naturally polarised) because making polarised positron is a difficult task to do. Category: Around the World | Tagged: , , ,

Spin doctors

| 8 May 2008 Theorists and experimentalists aren't always of the same opinion. There is one thing on which opinions aren't polarised though, and that is polarisation. Polarisation is a special characteristic of a particle bunch – a sort of measure of the particles’ combined spin – that, when studied in the right sort of detector at the ILC, is supposed to give clues and answers on phenomena like the Higgs, supersymmetry or searches for new physics and extra dimensions. To study the collisions, and also to understand polarisation better, a few groups of a total of about 30 people around the world are designing and building polarimeters that measure the degree of polsarisation of the particles before and after collisions. They have just had their first 'collaboration' meeting at DESY in Zeuthen, near Berlin, Germany. Category: Around the World | Tagged: , , , , , ,